The Naked Room Read Online Free PDF Page B

time. However, a number of parties after we’d been threatened with eviction, I’d found self-confidence. It was time to find romance.
    I met the one whom I thought my soul mate at the Fort St George, a pub much patronised by students. Stuffed into a corner seat in The Snug, I listened to the roar of conversation all around me, while hiding from a particularly persistent youth who thought my life would be greatly enhanced by his ardour. Eager to reach the restroom without my admirer following me, I tripped over a pair of highly polished riding boots protruding from the next table and landed on the floor. Their owner bent and gallantly lifted me to my feet. I looked into his twinkling blue eyes framed with burnished brown hair and fell madly in lust.
    ‘Women don’t usually fall so hard for me!’ he said, ‘I need to make the most of this.’
    ‘In your dreams,’ I replied, emboldened by his appreciative gaze and shot full of newfound confidence. He let me go and I could feel his eyes on me as I sidled through the throng. He waylaid me on my way back to the table and that was the beginning of the most wonderful time in my life—until it ended in heartbreak and humiliation.
    For the first time in years, I allow the memories of the six glorious months during which he cherished me in every way an average looking Australian farm girl could only dream of. When I let my guard down and became a vulnerable fool as ninety percent of women do at sometime in their life. If they’re telling the truth, that is. How I managed to keep my job with my mind all over the place, I’ll never know. His love gave me the confidence to blossom and courage to be myself, except around his family and friends, who regarded me as NLU, not like us.
    James came from a long line of upper crust gentlemen who, somewhere along the way, had sullied their class by becoming manufacturing stalwarts. A comparatively recent ancestor gambled away most of the family shekels in the 1860’s, so his heir was forced to-God forbid-go into trade. Having had to suck it up, as Ally would have said, they made a fortune and played aristocrats when it suited them. A hereditary peerage helped considerably. The pressure for James to conform by entering the family business as his brother Peter had, was immense. Failing that, as the second son, one of the forces would be a suitable occupation.
    By the time I met him he had almost finished a degree in economics, but secretly yearned to take music at Trinity College. I loved to listen to him play the piano—Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn—the names at that time unfamiliar, but which tripped from Ally’s tongue every day.
    Memories of the morning after my pregnancy was confirmed loom in my mind. James had gone on an extensive trip to Europe, reluctantly standing in for his father on business for his family’s firm which manufactured agricultural tools. We argued the night before he left when I urged him to confront his parents with his plans for a musical career.
    ‘Eloise, it’s not the right time. They need me to do this trip for them now.’
    ‘But James, this won’t be just one time. There’ll be another, then another—’
    Was I the only one who could see the family sucking him inexorably into the course they’d set for him? This three week trip was the thin end of the wedge. Guilty, because he would be throwing back the support given by his father, he felt he owed them some time. ‘Back off, El, it’s none of your affair. They’re my parents and I have to handle this my way. It’s the least I can do,’ he’d snapped. I knew by the fleeting kiss which he had given me as he left, that he was still angry.
    Yes, I had been pushy, but I thought we were close enough for me to show how I felt. Stupid, stupid. Big mistake. I sank into the depths of despair, waiting for a letter, even a postcard over the next ten days. The phone in our flat was out of order so he couldn’t have called me. At that time, only a few